A Common Dementia
by Come like shadows
Summary: Seven people have one thing in common. Schizophrenia. All the voices say they're "Guardian Forces", meant to protect. But if that's true, why do they contain such terrible powers? And why do they want to find the other GFs? What of the people they live in
1. PROLOGUE1

SQUALL

"… I hate this job." He sits in his car, forever doomed to smell like orange chicken and burnt fried rice, and doesn't move. He watches the setting sun reflect off of the high windows of the brick walk-up, turning cool glass into rectangular slices of suspended fire. Squall winces, the motion marring his forehead even farther, the scar once again in extreme relief. He turns up the A/C.

He considers leaving the cartons of takeout on the passenger seat to ferment, and pointing the car west. Driving until he finds the spot where ocean meets sky. Maybe turning north afterwards. Canada's supposed to have reasonable weather. Cold year round. Never getting above eighty degrees-

_(Apartment two. Eleven-Fifty total.)_

Squall groans and switches off the engine without looking. The boxes are grabbed, warmth leeching through the cardboard to burn his fingers, making them itch at the foreign sensation. Out of the car, up the sidewalk, ring the doorbell, wait for an answer, say the price, wait for money to be gathered from between the cushions and terracotta jars above the fridge, collect the money, make prolonged eye contact to get a bigger tip, and drive away.

Same thing day in and day out. 2 PM until 10 PM. The eighth circle of hell, forced to reenact the same routine day after day until eventual psychotic breakdown.

_(If you hate it so much why not quit?) _

"And who would hire me?" Talking to yourself was safe in the car. But not in subway, public bathroom, or chain coffee stores. Squall learned this the hard way. "I barely have my GED and a six-year gap where I did nothing other than take multi-colored pills and talked about my feelings."

_(That's good though.)_

"You call medicated stupors good?"

_(The talking. _Feelings. _You should do it more often. You hardly talk to me as is.)_

"You're the voice inside my head. How could I _not _talk to you?"

_(You'd be surprised.)_

The sun's finally set. Squall rolls down the window and sticks out one pale arm, allowing his fingers to slice through the air currents like knives. Its summer, but the air is already cool. His car radio got stolen but he doesn't need it. Shiva starts humming an ancient melody, fragile as glass but just as deadly.

Everything is at peace. He's encased in ice.

ZELL

Zell hates the smell of Chinese food.

Hates the way it gets into the seams of your clothing and lingers for days, no matter how many windows you open.

He stands in the train terminal, on a little wooden dock, watching trains fly by. He can be taken anywhere. To Yonkers, to the city, down to the south where the sky is clear and the air clean. To where hot dogs aren't left to sit in the murky water of their carts all day and are actually _warm _when they give them to you.

Zell scowls as his stomach growls and flips up the collar of his zip-up. He should've gone shopping yesterday. Stocked up on the essentials. Buns, ketchup, relish. He thrust his hands deeper into his pockets. If not for the tattoo perched on his left temple, spread out like the roots of a tree, he would've seemed like a discouraged twelve year-old.

New Jersey smells like burning Chinese food and paper factories. Cerberus is getting antsy. Zell hops from foot to foot. People glance over, but Zell doesn't stop. He pulls his hands out of his pockets and starts to swing them, slowly.

Cerberus never speaks. It's a rush of foreign emotions, clouding his judgment, making him laugh or scream at a drop of a hat. Right now invisible haunches are being raised, and the urge to maintain dominance is extreme.

Somehow this translates into shadow-boxing.

The empty circle around him grows wider as people slowly back away. New Jersey is used to strangeness; the proximity of New York City ensures it.

Zell's tried so hard to control the foreign intruder in his mind. There were once pills, a counselor named Kadowaki and a very short stay in a padded room.

But he's given up on all of those things. It's the way of the Jedi now. All meditation and _"Zen and the art of Faking It"_.

Cerberus wants him to let loose, give this train terminal a rampage it will never forget; anything to turn all the eyes away.

Zell gives the air in front of him one more ferocious punch-

_(Booyah!)_

And twists his fists deeper into the pockets of his coat once more. He is in control.

_(I am in control. I am in control.)_

SELPHIE

It's hard to pull off a yellow jumpsuit in everyday life.

It's even harder to pull it off underwater.

Scores of fish follow her as she swims through the water; florescent lighting above the tank cuts through its depths and renders strange shadows on its floor.

She could feel _Leviathan_ twisting in her mind. Swimming through imaginary currents.

No one in the aquarium knows she's insane. That she's been hearing voices since she was old enough to understand Basic English. And she's told no one.

Selphie harpoons a dead parrot fish and places it in the mesh bag she's clenching in one gloved hand. Blood is swirling through the water like ink droplets in vinegar, entrails float on the minuscule current to be eaten by smaller fish.

The Voice (even though it can hardly be called a voice, it rarely ever speaks. Selphie likes to think that it chooses not to, instead of being unable to.) is her friend. A constant companion in a world of abandonment that understands her even better than her own-

_(Foster.)_

Mother.

The Aquarium is the best place for them.

A giant water serpent in a perfect little artificial world of aquatic life. And the little girl that wants to help any animal in any way she can. They've combined their interests until it's hard to tell where Selphie ends and _Leviathan _begins.

_Leviathan_ refuses to let her work with the whales though. They're too big for him not to get nervous when Selphie's around them, no matter how many time she's explained "They eat plankton, _Lev_. Not people_. Geez!_ You get so twitchy sometimes-"

(She told one person once about Leviathan "The Voice In Her Head". It had been her best friend through elementary and middle school.

One minute she was opening her mouth to speak, the next moment she was laying on her back while an ER doctor shone a light in her eyes. Apparently she had an epileptic fit, apparently she was not to leave the hospital until she was given the clear, apparently her best friend didn't want to talk to her anymore.

Apparently the only thing Leviathan could now willingly say was _Sorry. I didn't mean to._)


	2. PROLOGUE2

PROLOGUE2: ANTI-HERO, GUNSLINGER AND PROF.

SEIFER

Detroit is the closest thing to hell that Earth can manage in Seifer's opinion.

Makes sense that the demon in his head named _"Diablos"_ would want to live there.

Sandwiched between two day-old fried rice and a monstrous pile of dirty dishes, Seifer curses out the voice in his head. _'I blame this all on you. I hope you fucking know it. It I didn't have to cart your useless self in my head most of my life, I would have been able to finish school. I wouldn't have to work three jobs to pay rent on a shitty apartment in the shittiest part of town.'_

_Diablo _laughs. _(I never told you to go to our parents. Let them shuffle you away to the nearest psychiatric center, like a living tumor. It's your fault your life sucks. Deal with it. Don't come bitching to me.)_ His voice is smooth like smoke and the power of it just as suffocating.

Seifer looks at his burnt and bruised hands through a near-constant veil of rage and wishes he was anywhere else.

_(Wishes don't do you that much of good Blondie. Mind your head, there's an angry Asian with a skillet behind you.) _

Seifer leaves this job to go to one as equally unglamorous. He doubles as a bartender and bouncer in a seedy underground bar. The only perk is the free drinks.

The strobe light hurts his eyes, so he always squints. The women perched on the stools in front of him twitter that it makes him look _stoically serious_; they keep pushing their chests at him. Seifer looks away and wishes for a bar fight.

The only way for Seifer to control _Diablos_ is to grapple. But in the way of anger they are even. They go for each others necks and the leash Seifer has on the voice is so insignificant that he sometimes wonders who's controlling who.

He's angry and he's frustrated and he just so very _tired_ that some days he wishes for the calm of the asylum. Just so he'll have a chance to _sleep_.

He's on his way home from the third job (pressing clothes at an all-day drycleaners) when he gets jumped.

All of his control on _Diablos_ breaks. He's screaming in a language that has never been on the face of Earth and his eyes turn red in the ugly light streaming from the florescent lights above him.

The muggers-turned-victims feel real fear for the very first time. There's an invisible weight pressing them down, everything turns negative.

Light, Dark. Dark, Light.

Then _Blackness_.

IRVINE

There's so much fire, separated by such a thin veil between him and its source.

The days when the urge gets bad, when Irvine can barely restrain himself from blowing off all of the tops of the mountains on this small island and bathing in all the wonderful _heat_, he calls in sick at work. He takes the train to Sakurajima volcano and hides in the craters and whirls of the black ground until the urge passes.

It ruins his boots, and one occasion his hat, but that's a minor sacrifice compared to torching all of Japan.

The heat makes sweat run down his face in rivers, the only time that it really bothers him is when _Ifrit _is close to the surface.

The girls of the Harajuku Station love his American cowboy look. They'll miss him today and come into the café he works at with "Get Well" gifts for _American-san_, but he won't be there. _Ifrit_'s not exactly the type of person you'd send to accept gifts on your behalf. He doesn't have the gentle touch required.

Irvine perches himself on the side of a gentle slope and lays back in the yellowing grass. There are flowers all around him, small animals running through the tall grass; the area is full of life.

_Ifrit_ is roaring, demanding to be released. Running claws up and down the mental barrier separating his and his guests' consciousness.

Irvine smirks and pulls his hat lower. "Hold your horses." He likes to make him wait, force the power lurking behind his eyes just who the boss really is. _Ifrit_ might have all the power. But Irvine's the one who decides when it's time to play.

Irvine never told a soul about what he heard. The things that _Ifrit_ had shown him in the dim, suffocating moments between sleep and wakefulness. Not his foster parents, not the teachers at his small country school. Not the first girls he kissed. Not the first boy.

What happens in his head is between himself and _Ifrit._ And that's the way it'll stay.

Irvine kicks off his boots and places them carefully in a gully behind him. The jacket goes next.

Heat is rising up off of his arms, disrupting the air around him. The dry grass at his feet begins to spark.

His shirt goes next. Followed by his pants. He's lost too many good clothes because_ Ifrit _was antsy.

Clear flames begin to run up his wrist and toward his elbows. First they glow blue with extreme heat, then they fade back to deep orange. He gives no sign that it hurts.

His body is outlined by a foreign shape. Large muscular wrists, forearms and back. His head is framed by a pair of black curving horns.

The grass at his feet erupts as the outline becomes solid. A roar echoes across the hills.

The hat is last to go.

QUISTIS

She wears her hair in a bun to keep it from whipping around her head.

A head that is currently sticking out of the window of a car going sixty miles per hour.

The vast column or rapidly spinning to the right of her car is attracting her complete attention. The video camera that she's holding to her eye to record it is merely a bonus. _Quetzalcoatl_ is crowing with excitement and sheer exhilaration.

Quistis narrows her eyes against the dust that's clouding her glasses; she refuses to wear the goggles the rest of the team wears. A part of her wishes that she was chasing a lightning storm instead, something big and powerful, frying the ground the moment it touches down, rendering everything to ash-

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes for a moment. All she can hear is her driver yelling in her left year and the giant vacuum of wind in her right.

'_Keep a barrier. Keep control. This is not his body. This is yours.' _

_Quetzalcoatl _tries to speak. She shuts the door as quickly as possible and steadies her arm against the door.

The man at her back, driving an SUV into the heart of a storm wants to start a relationship with her. He says she's unlike any woman he's ever met.

But how can you devote your life to another person when most of your time is spent on the thing residing in your own brain?

Electricity crackles between her hand and the door frame.

She can't keep up enough focus. There's too much static. Too much going on at once. Once this run is over she should go on a vacation. Use all the time she has stocked up. Go to Colorado, or Minnesota.

They're used to thunderstorms there.

Quistis wouldn't feel that bad if she had a voice in her head under normal conditions. She'd go to the doctor, get some medication, and take care of it.

She'd like it better if it didn't talk to her like any other normal person.

And if it'd stop telling her to find the _other ones like her_.


	3. CHAPTER1: YONKERS V NYC

CHAPTER1: YONKERS V. NYC

ZELL

When Zell was younger he liked to pretend that trains were giant metal centipedes that people rode in. The windows were the insects millions of eyes, the wheels its scurrying feet.

Then _Cerberus_ would tell him to stop messing around and just get in the train.

Zell went to school in the city and had a halfway decent job there as well. He didn't particularly enjoy it, but working a shitty job that barely paid minimum wage was part of the norm for a "struggling college student".

That's what all of this was about.

Zell sits in a corner seat, giant headphones securely plastered to both ears. If he slipped and started talking to himself, people would think he was singing. Both feet on the ground, arms tense and twisted deep into his pockets to control the random twitches that Cerberus caused.

Keeping up appearances, trying to stay as far below the radar as possible. Anything to keep out of an asylum as long as possible. That's what his life revolved around right now.

He exits the train, walks into the heart of the city, hides in the tunnels that the tall buildings created; a labyrinth of heat and shadow.

_Cerberus_ feels at home here.

SQUALL

Another day of greasy overpriced food.

There are four boxes of Chinese food slowly moldering in the backseat and Squall doesn't care at all.

A bicyclist is trying to force his way between the bumper of Squall's car and a row of newspaper dispensers. He puts the front wheel between these two obstacles, grandly realizes that there isn't enough room for the entire bike and gestures for Squall to move his car. The replying gesture Squall makes without looking is very short and only involves one finger. The other man, wearing a spandex bodysuit and a Day-Glo orange helmet, responds by picking up his bike and placing it on the hood of Squalls car. The bicyclist soon followed.

_(Interesting race.)_

There was a MP3 in his pocket. Squall puts one ear bud in, but doesn't turn it on. "…hm?"

_(Always trying to get the world to bend around you.)_

"And you try to control it. Your point?"

_(…)_

_(…I showed it to you because I cared. I never tried to scare you.)_

"I was _thirteen_."

There's a pause. The section of his brain behind his eyes feels startlingly empty for one second. The heat, which went completely unnoticed before, begins to make him sweat. Squall fidgets, pulls at the heavy fabric of his pants and takes the ear bud out. "I'm sorry. I know. I'm feeling…_antsy_. Like I'm holding my breath, waiting for something to happen."

_(Waiting for what to happen?)_

ZELL

The Caf was closed.

Zell stares.

The Caf is _never_ closed.

Campus is dark; the halogen lights hanging from flower-like poles do nothing to cut through the darkness. There are small groups of other students, clustered around the lights like moths, smoking or something else.

No one is close enough to see him have a fit.

He punches the air three times, swings one fist down to score a low blow, and drives his knee up. He's just finished a three hour class on the philosophy of feminism and is really in the mood for some real food. Something messy and nowhere neat and orderly, preferably.

_(FOOD. FOOD. FOOD.) _

Zell has perfected the art of talking without moving his lips. "The one time you decide to actually speak to me, you have to be a major pain in the ass. _Shut up!_"

_(FOOD.)_

Zell fisted both hands in his not-mohawk. The last train went out three hours ago. The one friend he had close to campus was on vacation with his new girlfriend. He had the money for food, but no desire to walk the five blocks in the middle of the night to his favorite eatery, just to get his money stolen along the way.

_(FOOOOD.)_

Ma Dincht would kick his ass if she saw him now. Alone in the middle of the night on an abandoned campus in the largest city in the state. With no food. Just great.

Zell fished around in his pockets, one eye squinted against the light as he passed under it. He found his phone and hit speed dial number two.

Number one was his mother.

Number two was his favorite Chinese food place.

SQUALL

A twelve hour shift.

_Twelve hours._

And just when he's about to drop off the car, take the subway home, he gets one final delivery.

God must hate him.

_(NYU Campus Library.)_

"Which one? There's at least a dozen affiliated with the campus."

_(The Bobst Library.)_

"…"

"…do I have to do it?"

_(Go Squall; spread your MSG-free goodness across the land.)_

Squall points the car away from home and drives through nearly empty streets toward the campus. Moths swarmed the streetlights he passed under, slowly burning themselves to death when they landed.

ZELL

Hiding in a Library. Waiting for Chinese food.

Not exactly his ideal plan for a Friday night.

Zell turns up the volume on his headphones but leaves them strung around his neck. All of the librarians on-duty are students. They don't care about noise.

Zell is facing the main entrance in a small alcove created by two bordering shelves and a wall. He can only see the main door by the barest of margins. Behind him, accessible by the narrow pathway of a pair of shelves that don't meet, is the secondary fire door. No one uses this door because hardly anyone knows about it.

Zell tilts his head back and waits. There's a strange feeling growing in his stomach, not hunger, almost like… butterflies?

An emotion of _Cerberus'_?

SQUALL

"You're quiet." He can hear the faint clatter of ice as something shakes itself awake.

_(Really? I thought you liked me quiet. You normally say I talk too much.)_

"…"

_(Don't feel guilty.)_

_Shiva_ sighs. There are scary times when Squall can almost see her. When he looks in the mirror while they're having a conversation and he can see feminine features just beneath the surface of his face, or blue braids intermingling with his own brown hair.

Those are the days when he considers going back to the old medication. When the shakes get so bad that he remembers why all of the rooms in his apartment aren't white for a reason.

_(Did you ever consider that you're not the only one?)_

ZELL

Anxiety fills him and spills over.

Zell bites his lip and curls his hands into two deadly fists. "What are you _doing_?"

The feeling doesn't abate.

Zell tries to breathe deeply but his breaths are shallow, panicked.

In, Out. In, Out.

SQUALL

He carries the carton of food with both hands.

"The only one of what?"

There was no parking for the main entrance, so he's forced to park on a paralleling side street and hope someone left the side door open.

ZELL

In. Out.

In. Out.

There's sweat forming on his forehead and a pain deep in his side. He briefly considers the thought that _Cerberus_ is trying to kill him. The muscles in his neck tighten.

Something like a growl is beginning to rumble deep in his throat.

SQUALL

He tries the side door with his hip and nudges it open. He makes it fully within the door and suddenly stops. There's a strange feeling inside his chest. Not an actual ache but… almost like homesickness.

_(That you're not the only one with a GF.)_

His eyes fall on a patch of bright blonde hair. Blue eyes turn to meet his.

Almost like seeing someone you haven't seen in years unexpectedly, and realizing that you never really knew them as well as you should have.

Zell gets up slowly, his hands are loosely curled at his sides. There's a pause as the both stare each other down. One, a Chinese food delivery boy with facial disfigurement. The other a college student with facial tattoo. Zell walks closer. "Are you…?"

Squall drops the box of food and runs.

_(Squall!)_

"I can't believe this, I can't believe this." Squall hardly talks. But suddenly he finds all the words pouring out of him like a bottle without a stopper. "You can't do this to me. I spent six years in an asylum because of you, stop throwing shit my way. I don't need it." His hand gets stuck in his pocket; the Griever ring is caught on the fabric of his jeans.

_(Calm down. Calm down please-)_

The keys are out of his pocket. He sprints across the street and narrowly avoids getting hit by a late night delivery truck. Its headlights are seared into his retinas.

Zell runs after him. Something deep inside of Zell, not even himself or _Cerberus_, knows that he can't let this stranger get away. His life may actually depend on it.

The door to the car is halfway open, a figure is getting inside.

Zell blinks and suddenly the man is not in the car. He's pressed against the side of it with Zell's hands gripping the collar of his shirt. Half-drunk with adrenaline, Zell realizes that his hands don't really look like hands at all, they look more like claws. Everything is blurry around the edges. He can't register if _Cerberus_ is there anymore. He may even _**be**__ Cerberus_.

There's a streetlight five feet away, it only illuminates half of their faces. To an observer they could be doing anything. They're pressed up against each other, fists in the others clothing, looking more like lovers than total strangers.

The light is good enough for Zell to see the frost that quickly creeps across the car window. It thickens and begins to run down the door, into the grooves where car door and car meet.

Zell tears his eyes away to look into eyes that glow blue. Squall's eyelashes have snow caught in them.

"What are you?"


	4. INTERLUDE: RINOA

INTERLUDE: RINOA

Angelo is hiding under her bed and he won't come out.

Rinoa is kneeling on the floor next to him, holding an arm under the bed and cooing, but the dog doesn't move. There's lots of dust under the bed, Rinoa isn't that up to date on such things as they tend to be pushed aside and forgotten for better things, and it's starting to irritate her arm.

Rinoa pulls her arm out from under the bed, unearthing a legion of dust bunnies in the process. She watches them skitter across the floor in the slight breeze the overhead fan makes and sits up.

_(Need to leave soon.)_

"I know. But I'm not leaving Angelo here alone."

_(You'll miss your flight.)_

"Don't worry about it mom!" Rinoa teased, tapping out a beat on her knees. The tapping grew longer as her smile shrunk. "…do you think they'll like me?"

_(They liked you before. They'll like you now.)_

"But things here aren't the same as they were in the other worlds. We're different people here. This is the farthest we've been from the main plotline in ages!"

(_All of the Guardian Forces stay the same. We'll make sure that they remember.)_ There was a constant background of whistles and trills as she spoke, the slow rise and descent of the harp, and the comforting lap of the sea.

Rinoa nodded. "I guess." She worried her lip between her teeth and fidgeted, every loose thread clinging to her pants was found and pulled. Every stray piece of lint squashed.

_(What's wrong?)_

"…Do you think they'll like me?"

A sigh like the morning wind grasping the waves. (They've followed you through every parallel reality, they've lived and died by your side. They've avenged you when you fell and killed you when you became too powerful to control yourself.)

_(…They'll like you.)_

Rinoa nodded. "Right. What was I thinking?" She laughed suddenly, and anxiety extracted its claws from her stomach. "That's how it always worked before, why should this time be any different?"

She pushed herself off of the floor and nodded at the floor-length mirror screwed into the wall next to her door. The girl who smiled back at her was blonde and fey, the two wings that protruded from the side of her head were held regally, fanned out in an invisible air current. Pale arms hovered mere centimeters above her own, as insubstantial as smoke.

She spun on her heel and stared at Angelo, who just decided that it was safe enough to emerge from under the bed. "Angelo, it's time to get in the crate."

Arms akimbo with that ferocious smile on her face that made her look more coy than plotting, Angelo knew she meant business.


End file.
